Spotlight: Cape Town Silent Book Club at PechaKucha

Guest post by Shawn Buck, organizer of Cape Town Silent Book Club

Much like the Silent Book Club, PechaKucha is a movement with chapters worldwide. The Cape Town chapter has been around for 17 years and has hosted hundreds of individuals to speak in their unique presentation style: 20 slides that automatically change after 20 seconds, making every presentation exactly 400 seconds (6 minutes, 40 seconds) of punchy storytelling, knowledge-sharing, and often vulnerability.

I’ve attended two of their events this year and loved hearing stories on everything from changing the cables for Table Mountain’s Cable Car to launching a Mexican candy brand in South Africa. I applied to speak a few months ago and knew exactly what I would speak about: the Cape Town Silent Book Club, the topic I could talk about for hours.

However, there’s a quote that floats around PechaKucha: “If you want me to speak for an hour, I am ready now. If you want me to speak for just a few minutes, it will take me a few weeks to prepare.” It was challenging and fun to boil down how SBC works, stories from our chapter, and the lessons it has taught me into 400 seconds. I spent weeks preparing a script, putting together slides, and practising, practising, practising to make sure I got it down as perfectly, but also naturally as possible.

When the night came, I was incredibly nervous, especially looking at the 300 people in the crowd. Seeing a bunch of the SBC community and friends who came to join and support made me feel much more at ease, though. The talk really was a love letter to all of them and how much they have changed my life by supporting our SBC chapter here in Cape Town. I felt proud to share our collective story with the PechaKucha crowd that night!

You can check out the video of the presentation here: https://youtu.be/g4dX-Znu6Bw